Perfect for post-Thanksgiving reading: The Holiday Issue of CWO

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Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday! And hope that - like me - you're avoiding the "Black Friday" madness by staying home and hanging out with family and friends for this long holiday weekend.

If you find yourself needing a break from all that togetherness - which you must be if you're reading this - I've got the perfect solution:

The Holiday Issue of CapeWomenOnline magazine is online! Ready to warm your heart, make you think, and inspire you to new creative heights ;-)

...Or at least bring you back down from family-stress-mountain! If that's the place you find yourself, check out our new Department of Meditation columnist, Constance Wilkinson. Her frank tone and cheerful voice will have you breathing more easily in no time.

The Life Stories section is filled with holiday tales that will make you smile, as well as a few recipes - don't miss Gail Nickerson's authentic Glogg recipe, which really needs to be made this weekend to ferment in time to celebrate Christmas Eve in Swedish style!

Our Creative Women section introduces you to some wonderful Cape artists, including one group show that plans to use their exhibit to collect donations of care package items to send overseas to a platoon of New England Marines. In Community Action, check out the article that my Girl Scouts wrote to advertise their service project for the local animal shelter (I'm so proud of their efforts and told them if they wrote it, I'd make sure it got published. They did, and I did.)

If you've just spent Thanksgiving arguing about food with your conservative Uncle Frank, check out my article on Food Labeling in our Environment section. Did you know that 70% of all processed food products in the U.S. are made with genetically engineered ingredients? And they don't have to put any of that on the labels? Follow the link in the article to the Just Label It website and sign the petition to make the FDA require companies to tell us what's in our food.

Enough of me rambling - click on over to the magazine and see what's going on for the holidays on Cape Cod. And while you're there, sign up to receive our announcements - we only publish 5 times a year, so I promise we don't send many emails. No worries about a flooded inbox (like mine this Black Friday - is everyone getting all these email notices - I mean, how many times can the stores send out the same message with a different header?)

Making the Christmas Pudding...

Every fall, my extended family gets together to make the traditional Plum Puddings. The original (secret) recipe was carried over to America back at the turn of the last century, around 1901. This same recipe has been handed down through the generations to the oldest daughters. My mother and her cousin Vicki are now the oldest members of the family, the keepers of the pudding, so to speak.

This weekend, we gathered in Plymouth to make pudding. With a smaller than usual band of helpers, it was decided to make a smaller than usual batch - and then that too was whittled down to making only the mincemeat portion of the pudding... most of the time was spent drinking wine, shopping, playing games and catching up with each other. But some of the traditional rituals were still fulfilled...

My Aunt Kate manned the food processor, and told the stories of the first year they introduced their mothers to the idea of using a Cuisinart.

The job of grating the lemons still fell to the youngest helper, who wondered why she didn't get to use any modern technology. And complained that she didn't get to measure anything. "Wait until you're older," we all told her. "It's not your turn for that job."

As the oldest helper, my mom got to measure and add the alcohol, and there was the usual discussion of just what constitutes "One nice large drinking glass," as the recipe dictates.  With the addition of the alcohol, came the traditional stir-stir-stirring and wish making.

One of the nicest plum pudding traditions is the wishes you get with the whole process. One big one with the stirring, and another when you light it at Christmas. This year, I'm afraid the O'Sullivans only get the one stirring wish, so I hope they were good wishes.
 

When everyone had smiled and stirred, Aunt Kate packed the mincemeat into plastic containers for each of us to take home. The suet and crusty bread were divided for those who were going home to finish making their puddings, and the rest of us will use the mincemeat to make pies. Aunt Kate has a great method for making mincemeat tartlets, which I'm eager to try out. Perhaps this will be the year my kids will enjoy eating the "fruits" of their labor, and maybe all their wishes will come true.

I sure hope mine does.

Who says Saint Bernards Don't Like the Beach?

Puppy likes the beach. A lot.

People are always surprised when they see her cavorting in the waves. "Is that really a Saint Bernard?" they'll ask. "I didn't know they liked water," is the inevitable followup.

Puppy doesn't know anything different. This is her beach. This is her life.

This is what she knows and loves.

Yes, she reeeeeally likes the snow, too. I'm sure she wishes there were a lot more of the white stuff around to roll and play in. But the cold waves of November are almost as good.

In Which Puppy Chases Birds...

Early November along my beach, there are hundreds of migrating birds. It's like a birders' paradise. Or a bird dog's dream.

Sometimes, Puppy thinks she's a bird dog instead of a Saint Bernard.

This past weekend, there was a huge group of plovers gathering on the beach by the jetty, trying to stay out of the howling November winds. The inevitable group of seagulls was huddled nearby.

Puppy didn't like any of them on her beach.


But she found that the plovers don't scare so easily. They fly, and then regroup. So you have to keep chasing them.




After much chasing back and forth, Puppy enjoyed the brisk November water, smile on her face for a job well done. She got those birds off her beach. For a moment or two.

What did you do this weekend?